Fishing for Birds
by speaks
Summary: Beast Boy snares Raven in a game of emotions that spirals them down a path they never thought they'd walk together—and it would be far easier to walk it if a new villain wasn't shattering the calm of Jump City.
1. Prologue

—-—- Prologue

It was a cloudless night when the five of them met. Five strangers still then, with stranger pasts. It was later that night when a common goal brought them together and bound them in friendship. And it was as the sun rose that they stood on the shore where their home would later stand, and Beast Boy saw Raven smile for the first time. The corners of her mouth curved upward and she said, "You know, you're kind of funny."

Man, did he ever get a kick out of that. He made smile the girl without smiles!

So really, though she was never to know it, it was Raven's own fault that Beast Boy wasted so much time mercilessly pelting her with jokes. With pranks, with loud-mouthed remarks and ceaseless banter, with pokes and prods and whatever else popped into his head. She hated it, _how_ she hated it, and since she knew full well what he was trying to do she begrudged that it was working.

Sometimes, especially in the beginning, Beast Boy would start to worry he'd gone too far, that maybe her dark demeanor and unresponsiveness was all there really was. He might as well be tickling a brick wall.

But then—!

It would happen, once in a while. He would hit the right nerve. Like a break in the clouds, she would smile before she could catch herself. One time he even saw her teeth! Admittedly, half the time she was smiling at her own snarky comeback to whatever Beast Boy had thrown at her, but a win was a win. On the team's first April Fool's Day together she busted into laughter so suddenly at Starfire's green hair that Beast Boy almost fell over in shock—and then he _did_ fall over, when a backlash of coiled energy whipped out from Raven and shattered all the glasses on the coffee table.

Everyone else gaped, and Raven swept from the room with a flourish of her indigo hood to conceal her dimming expression.

But Beast Boy—he was grinning on the floor like an idiot with a million dollars.

"Did you guys _see that?"_ he exclaimed, leaping to his feet.

"Yeah, B, we saw," Cyborg said gravely. He shot a wary glance at the shards of glass, the dripping flat cola pooling at Starfire's bare feet.

"I wasn't talking about that," he dismissed, "I mean, Raven was laughing!" _Really_ laughing.

The only other time he'd heard her laugh so freely was during that strange dreamlike trip he and Cyborg had taken into her mirror, wherein they stumbled on the rare opportunity to meet Raven's Happiness. And, if he wasn't mistaken, he _did_ believe he'd just met her again.

People had accused him before of having an addictive personality, and this was something he couldn't deny. He was hooked. There was no other way to describe it. Something about getting her to slip her emotions was just... _satisfying_. It was a thousand times more satiating to get a lopsided grin out of Raven than to get full-bellied laughter out of all his other teammates. Maybe because it was harder to get. Maybe he only craved it like he craved high scores and rare collector's editions of old arcade games.

In a way, what he was doing was wrong. He understood that she controlled her emotions for a good reason. The surging lights whenever she lost control were enough to prove it, the bits of broken glass and electronics that slowly filled a metal trash can in the back of the Titans' pantry over the years (which Beast Boy jokingly referred to as the "emotican"). He was aware that his efforts to budge her were unraveling some of the carefully tied strings she'd tied to hold herself upright. But, though guilt wriggled in his heart, it was invariably drowned out by the urge to cut those strings, snip snip snip, one smile at a time.

On the first night of the rest of her life, Raven stared at the back of Beast Boy's head and wondered what the hell was so funny. He'd been cackling like a hyena for ten whole minutes. She could scarcely hear herself think.

"Raven," he said suddenly, startling her out of her attempted meditation, "you gotta come see this." He spun around on the couch, lolling over the backside like a dog, controller trailing along the carpet. "This is the funniest glitch we have _ever_ found in this game."

Cyborg attached his signature to the statement by bursting out into such boisterous laughter that he nearly fell off the couch.

Raven blinked at the screen unseeingly. "It looks the same as all the other times you play this game."

Robin spoke up from the far side of the room, where he and Starfire were still finishing their food. "Don't push it, Beast Boy. Raven's had a rough day. Let her meditate in peace for once, would you?"

"A rough day," amended Starfire with caution, "is what I think you would call the 'century statement.'"

"Understatement of the century!" Cyborg roared, unaware of the others' conversation, and threw down his controller in another fit of laughter. "BB," he went on, and slapped him on the back, "this is the funniest glitch anyone has found in _any_ game ever."

Knowing her cue, Raven rose to vacate the room. Today the world had ended because of her. It had been mended in the end, leaving a dangerous amount of happiness and hope swirling in her heart, but it still didn't mean she was completely okay. She'd had her fun and had amicably stayed for the party her friends threw in celebration, but now that the initial joy had worn off a familiar hollowness was creeping within her. Something about today had changed her, mentally and physically. She found that instead of being bombarded with all her friend's emotions, like the constant radio signals she was used to tuning out, there was radio silence instead and she had to purposefully reach out to turn up the dials. She'd yet to decide what it meant. More control or less control? Good or bad?

She needed time alone. Time to think. Time to recover.

"Beast Boy," Robin warned as the accused opened his mouth to call Raven back.

For Robin's intervention she was grateful. At the end of the world she'd found a deeper friend in her team leader than she knew she had, and he'd been there for her in a way she'd never have asked for from anyone. She knew he couldn't ever fully understand her—after all, no one could—but it was clear he understood what she wanted. That was more than good enough.

"Oh, shut up, Robin."

The shocked silence that fell over the tower's common room after Beast Boy spoke would have been heavy enough to smother a forest fire. Only the cartoony shriek of Cyborg's game character as it died interrupted the stillness. But Beast Boy clambered over the back of the couch, completely oblivious or completely uncaring of the reception of what he said, and cantered over to Raven where she hovered in the doorway.

"Come on," he complained, "it's _your_ party. You're staying." As if to prove his point he grabbed her wrist and began tugging her back into the room.

"Beast Boy," she growled through clenched teeth, standing stock still though he heaved on her arm. "Let _go." _She would give him three seconds before she_ made_ him let go.

Starfire descended on them with a concerned crease in her eyebrows. "I believe friend Raven has expressed her wish to be alone. Please let go, now, okay?"

But Beast Boy had transformed into a gorilla; with the added strength he was now nearing the couch and no one else seemed interested in stopping him. Robin was still comatose at the kitchen table, unable to process what Beast Boy had said.

"Oh hell no," Beast Boy joked as he transformed back. "She's been alone for long enough. It's time to play with the other kids."

"I _want_ to be alone," Raven snapped, finally wrenching her hand from his grasp. She pulled her cloak tightly about herself, feeling oddly vulnerable.

"What do I have to do to get you to stay, huh?" He dropped to his knees, hands clasped together, eyes glistening. "I hafta beg?" His body melted, though his eyes kept that same sharp glisten, the wide-eyed manipulation, and he took on the form of a noble Great Dane. He pawed the ground and whimpered. Raven settled her weight onto the other hip, her hands at her waist as she shook her head in disbelief.

"Well. You have no shame." She already knew that, but sometimes he still managed to surprise her.

He shifted then into a St. Bernard, his face so sad and droopy with melancholy cheeks that Starfire's hands went to her face.

"No shame," Raven repeated in the same monotone. She tilted her head to the side, mirroring Beast Boy's doglike motion, and wondered why on Earth he cared so much.

Beast Boy shifted again, shrinking, his piles of fur shrinking away until all that was left was a fat, stout, round little body, wide buggy eyes that pointed different directions, and a tongue that lolled out of his mouth sideways. The green pug at Raven's feet gave one short wheezy bark.

Cyborg snorted, and the sound of metal on metal mixed with the game's 8-bit soundtrack as he slapped his knee. "A _pug_, man?"

Raven pursed her lips at the idiot at her feet. What was he trying to accomplish? He looked so.. so foolish. He gave another bark and then shifted again, into an even smaller and even more horrible-looking dog. A tiny little chihuahua with eyes like marbles glued onto a skull. Cyborg immediately tried to jokingly grab at him, shouting, "A _chihuahua? For real, man?"_

When Beast Boy squirmed away, his paws skid on the tile and his stubby little legs did a skittering dance before completely giving out on him. He faceplanted hard.

And Raven couldn't help it. She laughed.

She tried to cover it with her hand (after all, she'd really worn herself out today—this was too much). But Beast Boy saw, and suddenly his beaming human face was three inches from hers and he was saying, "Alright, Raven!"

Before she could comprehend what had happened, she'd been pulled over the couch and found herself between Cyborg and Beast Boy, staring at the video game flashing across the flat screen.

"Why do you do that?"

"Okay, take this," he told her, ignoring the question and instead shoving his controller into her hands.

He was never afraid to make a complete fool of himself in his efforts to get her smiling, or laughing, or just participating. She wanted to know _why_.

"You'll like this," he assured her. "Just walk forward until you get to the streetlamp there."

She complied, but out of the corner of her eye she surveyed her strangest friend, his sprawled position, his lax demeanor. He certainly was not acting as though the world had just nearly ended.

"Why do you do that?" she repeated later, when the other three titans were fast asleep on the living room floor. Raven was at the window, pretending to meditate. In truth she was counting stars because she couldn't summon the concentration required for the deep meditation she desired. Beast Boy remained on the couch, playing the same game, messing with some other glitch he and Cyborg had discovered.

There was a gentle beeping as he paused the game, and she heard the couch rustle as he turned toward her. "Do what?"

She shrugged. "Act like a moron just to try to make me laugh."

"I dunno..." She glanced his way and caught a crazy glint in his eye. "Maybe I'm not trying. Maybe you just think I'm funny."

"Dream on, Beast Boy." But her deadpan stare had no effect on him.

"I don't have to, I know you think I'm funny."

"Just because you get one laugh doesn't—"

_"One laugh?_ Come on, Rae—"

"Okay, maybe a couple of—"

"A couple of—!"

"So? What do you want?" Raven barked at him. She didn't remember having crossed the room, but there she was, towering over him. "You want me to say I think you're funny? I think you're the funniest guy in America? Funniest thing since Tamaranian pudding?"

On the table, a crack went through Beast Boy's glass and water trickled down. Raven simmered down. But Beast Boy was giggling. "Good one," he said. "But nah, you don't need to say it. I mean, I already know you think so."

"Do you?" she muttered dangerously, almost a threat.

He flipped through the options on the pause menu, until he got to 'save game.' "Yep." The 8-bit melody faded and the screen cut to black. He turned to her and flashed a confident, toothy smile. "So, what," he asked, "you wanna watch a flick or something? We can watch whatever we want since Star's passed out cold." He jabbed his thumb in her direction, where she lay with her back to the side of the couch, her hair spilling over Robin's shoulder.

Raven stepped back, cloak closing around her.

"The world ended today, Rae," Beast Boy added, a sudden note of quiet sincerity in his tone. "Watch a movie with me, okay? Don't make me turn into a chihuahua again."

"That wouldn't work twice," Raven mumbled. Yet she took a seat anyway.

"So, what'll it be?"

Out of curiosity, Raven reached out mentally and turned up the dial on Beast Boy. She was so accustomed to mentally filtering out his unending torrential barrage of loud emotions, that it was almost disquieting to have him so empathically silent. His emotions felt warm under her metaphorical touch. Bright and solid, happiness encasing a slew of other emotions, drowning them. Drowning her. So much light—grassy fields and sunny days and—Raven gasped and drew back. Too loud, too loud. His emotions were far too loud.

"Helloo? What do you wanna watch?"

She realized he was staring at her quizzically, and wondered how long she'd been silent. She turned his dial all the way down and decided that this newfound control was a gift. It was a gift she would take full advantage of.

Raven unclasped her cloak and let herself sink back into the soft couch cushions. The tension on her muscles melted and she sighed softly. "Your choice," she answered. Surprisingly, she trusted him to pick out something good. Something that wouldn't rouse any old fears, or birth any new ones. Something to distract her. Something she'd enjoy. Because, loathe was she to admit it, but it had finally begun to dawn on her that while her friends knew what she wanted, Beast Boy alone seemed to have figured out what she needed.


	2. A Big Game

—-—- [1] A Big Game

It was on the same shore where Beast Boy first learned he could make her smile that he learned he could do far more to Raven.

As was usual, for the last couple months at least, the Titans were training on the beach below the tower as the T-shaped shadow passed slowly over them toward the east. The team had been training out in the sunshine quite a lot as of late. In fact, they'd been doing more training than actual crime fighting. Ever since the Titans had returned from Tokyo, crime had taken a massive dip in Jump City. Maybe the would-be villains had finally wised up and realized they were playing with players that were way out of their league.

"Or, you know, maybe there are just less villains around," Beast Boy sometimes wondered aloud, which was met with hesitant glee from Starfire but with skepticism from Cyborg and flat out cynicism from Raven and Robin, the last of whom was more convinced than ever that when they were all together they needed to train, and they needed to train hard. Luckily for Robin, Cyborg (in the boredom than ensued from being less needed) was all for the development of increasingly hazardous and ever more challenging obstacle courses. Every once in a while the intense training surely paid off. Times when they were called on from all around the city and to the farthest corners of the world to save somebody's ass.

But on days like today, days when the weather was just under seventy, the scattered clouds were covering the harshest of the sun's damaging rays, and the gulls were squawking, carried in from the sea on a salty summer breeze... On days like this, Beast Boy just wanted to loaf around with his friends and pretend they were still kids.

Instead his heart was racing as he slipped in the sand, kneeling beside Starfire where she trembled in the shallow water as it splashed over her legs again and again.

"You snipped the right wires didn't you?"

"Yes," she assured him, "I have taken all the steps that Robin has taught us!" And yet the bomb in her hand was still beeping, incessantly, threateningly.

Behind him Beast Boy could hear the sounds of the others still fighting off Cyborg's programmed drones. "Damn these training sessions," he said under his breath as the tide pushed him and Star a little further onto the shore. He didn't understand why _all_ of them needed to be able to diffuse a bomb under pressure. That was what_ teams _were for, right? Distribution of ability!

Of course, he did know why. These psycho training extravaganzas where Robin was throwing every possible scenario under the sun at them—he was preparing them for life after the Titans.

"Garfield!"

Beast Boy snapped out of it; Starfire hardly used his real name. "How long?"

"Twenty seconds!"

"Just throw it, Star! Time's up!" She could probably heave it into the stratosphere if she wanted!

Her expression grew even more worried as she tinkered with the bomb hopelessly. "But Robin said I must—"

"Diffusing it failed, Star, it's probably defective! It could blow _any second! _Robin—!" he called, turning to the the only person who could always talk sense into Starfire. But the other three were still locked in a vicious battle with the last of the drones. Time really was up.

Beast Boy snatched the contraption from Starfire's hands and was desperately trying to think of which animal had the strongest throwing arm, when the bomb clicked and went silent eleven seconds early. There was a half second of dead calm before Beast Boy dropped the contraption. It splashed into the water as he and Star fell away from it, he screaming at her, _"Run!"_

He soared up the hill toward his friends (as a seagull, of all things, the first bird that popped into his head) and saw Starfire pluck Cyborg from the sand by his arm as she fled past like he was nothing more than a leaf, saw Robin reaching up instinctually further up on the shore to catch her other arm. Then there was Raven, just a bit further on, still battling it out with the last of the drones. She wasn't even looking this way. She didn't know.

A deafening explosion rent across the shoreline.

Heat slammed into him as he slammed into Raven, and despite the searing white hot wall of energy he managed to force himself into the form of an elephant—the only large animal with thick tough skin, yet legs strong enough to keep from collapsing on her. His legs were stout as tree trunks, but even so, after a moment they buckled and he fell to his knees in the sand, slowly morphing back. It seemed a decade before the rain of debris finished falling.

Flat on her back in the hot sand, Raven squinted her eyes toward the sun. A deafening ringing noise reverberated inside her skull, rattling her like a bell. One second she'd been winning the fight with the last drone, and the next, this. She couldn't think or hear or speak. Her chest rumbled, but she couldn't even hear herself groaning. A green face faded to and fro overhead, in and out of focus, and she realized she could barely see.

Beast Boy was feeling a sharp and acute amount of pain on his back and the smoke was stinging his eyes, but the instant he'd transformed back he realized Raven looked... bad. But—he'd protected her from the brunt of it, hadn't he? Hadn't he?

"Raven," he said urgently, but he couldn't seem to get her eyes to focus on him. "Hey, Rae, can you hear me?" She showed no sign. "Oh, shit," he breathed as he brushed her hair aside from her face to reveal a small trickle of red trailing down from her hairline.

Her attention sparked when she felt her hair rustling. Someone was touching her. The ringing noise was still there but suddenly she could hear everything else, all at once. The fire alarm going off in the tower, the cries of upset birds, the ceaseless lapping of the waves, and Beast Boy. She couldn't make out any of his familiar features, but who else did she know that was green? And he was... on her. His voice finally cut through the toneless ringing, sounding distant. _Hit your head, _he was saying. But she couldn't seem to comprehend the words. They floated right out her other ear. But she could comprehend the sun, the sand. She knew they were on the beach. She knew she was on her back. She knew that Beast Boy was _sitting_ on her. And now she noticed with quiet, startled disbelief that he was gently reaching his hand under her neck, lifting her head up, leaning toward her—_what was he—?_

A sudden wave of dark energy flashed outward from her core, dispelling the ringing noise and everything else all at once.

She shot up sharply, as if woken from a midnight dream, just in time to see Beast Boy falling into the sand a dozen feet away. He groaned and rolled over enough to show her that his shirt had been all but torn to pieces in the back. Guilt squeezed her. She was finally beginning to understand what had happened.

"So I guess you're okay then," he muttered sarcastically, rubbing his side where he'd landed. He wobbled back over to her, windblown, looking for all the world like he'd just dived out of a plane. "The hell was that for?"

"I'm sorry," she said instantly. "I thought—I didn't realize the bomb had.."

"S'okay," he said, surprising her. "I think you banged your head up pretty bad. How many fingers am I holding up?"

She squinted at his raised hand. "Four," she said with confidence, but then she realized his hand was wavering back and forth... "Three," she amended. "It's three."

"Woah, that's not good," he said sharply. "Let me look."

He reached toward her head and she quickly leaned away. "It was three, wasn't it?"

"One finger, Rae. One finger. Hey, guys!" He called out, but the other Titans had yet to return from the other side of the tower. Smoke was still pouring up the hill from the water's edge. "You need this looked at right away." But as he reached toward her injury, dark energy crackled once more, and he retracted his hand with scarcely concealed hurt in his eyes. He'd thought she'd only sent him flying out of shock, or confusion. Now he was starting to wonder if it was that she actually didn't want him helping her. Come on, after all they'd been through? "What, you gonna throw me halfway across the beach again?" he sneered bitingly. "This is serious, you could actually be hurt. Just let me look at it!"

"I'm fine," she insisted, though her inner peace felt like a roiling ocean. It wouldn't surprise her if she needed a full day of meditating to recover from this. Her hand slipped in the sand when she attempted to lean away from him; he was reaching for her yet again to brush her hair away from the sticky wetness she could feel slipping down her cheek. "Leave it alone."

"Why won't you let me—"

That was when he realized. The moment he managed to part her hair from her face he saw.

Raven looked angry. She had on that patented 'I'd like to kill you' expression. He'd seen that loads of times, though, so that wasn't what caught him off guard. It was the mild pink tint to her cheeks. The way she was steadfastly averting his gaze. None of those things said angry to him. On the stark contrary, they said _flustered_.

His mouth actually fell open mid-sentence in surprise. In his confusion he thought back over what the last minute from Raven's perspective must've been like and suddenly it all clicked. He had _flustered_ her.

"Raven," he said, his voice suddenly cocky, and low with the promise of a really good punchline. "You didn't think I was trying to put the moves on you a minute ago, didja?"

From the way she rounded on him, he knew he must have hit the nail right on the head, and he promptly fell on his side in a fit of laughter. Raven was spared having to answer when the arrival of their other friends was announced by their shadows falling over them.

"I'd like to know what's so funny," Robin ground out, obviously in a dark mood.

"Oh nothing," Beast Boy sang, finally getting ahold of himself. "My back hurts like a _mother_ and I think Raven must be a little concussed."

"I'll be fine after some thorough meditation," Raven growled through her teeth, right at Beast Boy.

"What you need is a cold shower," Beast Boy snickered, sending a highly suggestive wink her direction. "That'll cool your fevered—" He coughed and spluttered as a generous pile of sand flew into his mouth, courtesy of a little flick of magic from Raven, who looked so utterly enraged it was a miracle she still had control of herself.

"I'll be in my room," Raven said, settling down to a careful monotone, "healing." She left her friends on the beach, who were watching Beast Boy scrape a pint of sand from his tongue with open amusement.

Raven was in her room for less than twenty minutes when three loud echoing knocks interrupted her steady descent into tranquility. She sighed and attempted to regain her foothold. "Azarath, Metri—"

A muffled voice cut through her stillness. "Raven, I know you're in there!"

She slid her door open just a few inches and Beast Boy's beaming face was there, three inches from hers. He caught the door before she could close it again and shoved his way unceremoniously into her room.

"What do you want, Beast Boy?" Was he here to make fun of her? Because she already felt embarrassed enough for a lifetime without any further assistance from him.

"Aren't'cha even gonna thank me for totally saving your butt?" he demanded.

"I would have been fine," she assured him, but then she remembered how he'd groaned when she threw him inadvertently across the beach... and she sighed. He _had _protected her, and she'd thanked him with violence. A note of sincerity crept into her voice when she added, "But... thank you."

He visibly brightened at that, his face morphing so quickly from judgement to gratitude that she realized he'd never been angry at all.

"So," he chirped, advancing on her again. Normally she'd hold her ground, but after the micro-fiasco on the beach she felt herself getting uneasy as soon as he stepped toward her. She backed away, feeling childish. It was just Beast Boy, for crying out loud! "Sooo." He seemed completely unaware of her discomfort. "Since I totally rescued you, damsel-in-distress style, you think you could help a guy out?"

Raven's face must have looked like a giant question mark because he turned around and pointed at his back with his thumb. "This. It freakin hurts." He was wearing a loose black t-shirt now, and bandages extended out from under the sleeves down his arms. "Cy threw some antiseptic and gauze on but I could _really_ go for a shortcut, if you know what I mean."

"You want me to heal it?" He rounded on her with big, bright, puppy dog eyes. Now Raven felt a little bad for assuming he'd come in here just to make fun of her. Deep breath. "Okay."

He gave a noisy sigh of relief and immediately whisked off his shirt.

Disbelief, embarrassment, contempt, and impatience swept through her sequentially. How many times must she remind him that his clothes _needn't_ be off for her healing powers to work? She pressed her fingertips to her temples and breathed heavily through her nose. _Breathe,_ she commanded herself. _Just because he's being an idiot doesn't mean you have to lose your temper. You're better than that._

When she opened her eyes he was watching her coyly over his shoulder. "You gonna heal me or what, Rae?"

So rude. "I will if you shut up for a second."

He only laughed at that. But despite his airy, nonchalant demeanor he flinched hard when she pressed her hands to his back and began to focus her concentration inward. She gradually moved up and down his back across the bandages, and as she progressed her friend's shoulders slowly sagged and relaxed. After about ten minutes she decided to peel away a bit of the dark, stained gauze. The skin underneath was raw and swollen but the open wounds had at least been sealed up.

"You'll want to leave the gauze on till the swelling goes down," she instructed.

Beast Boy only stretched his arms up over his head, then pushed them out behind him, hissing with pleasure. "I feel _sooo_ much better. How about you?" he tacked on. "Your head okay?"

"It would be if I'd had time enough to meditate before someone barged in."

"Oh. You're talking about me, right?" She gave him the most emotionless, deadpan glare she could muster and he immediately shrank back. "Sorry, sorry, I'll leave you alone now."

"You know where the door is."

But as she returned to the lotus position and began her chant, she didn't hear the door close. After a couple minutes she opened one eye, and saw with some annoyance that he was still standing in the same spot, rubbing his neck sheepishly. "Uhm, Raven?"

_"What?"_

The boy in her room wasn't at all perturbed by her seething tone. He met her eyes and asked, "Are you sure it's a good idea to meditate?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"It's just that, you know, it's a head injury. You're not supposed to go to sleep with a head injury or you could, uh..." He cleared his throat and watched a fly crawling across her dresser. "Die."

"Meditating is not at all like sleeping, so I think I'm okay."

"Won't you let Cyborg run a scan to make sure you're not concussed? Have you ever healed a concussion with your powers before? What if you fall asleep while you're meditating, or—"

"Beast Boy, _you_ are giving me a concussion."

"Rae—"

_"Raven," _she corrected. She was starting to lose her patience.

"I'd feel better if you at least did your meditating out in the common room so we'd know if anything happened to you."

"Will you relax? I'll be fine. It's impossible for me to meditate out there. I need peace and quiet." She turned her back on him abruptly and resumed her chanting, facing the window.

Still, the telltale hiss of her bedroom door closing didn't come. When she opened her eyes this time she almost bit her tongue off. Beast Boy had sat himself directly across from her, leaning against the windowpane.

She'd barely opened her mouth to tell him off when he said, "I'm gonna make sure you don't pass out or something, since you're so dang stubborn. S'not like there's anything better to do anyway. Don't worry, I'll be quiet. There's plenty of books in here. I'll read or something."

She ground her teeth. Even after all these years and all her hard work in tempering her harsh emotional landscape, he still found new ways to get under her skin. She pointed at him accusingly, about to tell him where he could shove his nosy nose... when he surprised her. His expression grew suddenly intense, and his eyebrows furrowed as he pleaded with her using only his wide eyes and one word._ "Rae."_

Whatever insult she'd been mustering died and she felt for a moment like he'd returned her earlier kindness by throwing sand in her mouth. The way he was looking at her now was exactly the way he'd looked at her when she lay on the beach. When she'd thought he was about to kiss her.

Only now, far more lucid, she recognized the emotion in his eyes for what it actually was.

She unfurled her mental feelers, almost dusty from disuse, and brushed against the edges of his psyche, tasting the edges of the emotions he was feeling—only the edges. His emotions were always so vivid that she hardly ever pushed further than an inch into Beast Boy's aura. What she tasted was honest concern. Sincerity. Kindness, and a hint of apprehension and fear. She felt ridiculous for thinking he'd been about to kiss her when the emotions radiated off of him so strongly they clogged her empathic senses and forced her to retreat mentally from him, back into herself.

How she could have mistaken them before was a mystery. But, withering under the intensity of his gaze, she couldn't help but feel that same jolt now that she'd felt on the beach. Raven had never been good at lying to herself. She knew that she'd shoved him away out of surprise, not because she hadn't wanted him to.

_"Gar,"_ she replied sarcastically, if a little late, mocking his use of his pet name. With her thoughts so scattered she couldn't think of any other retort.

But all the sarcasm in the world couldn't hide the way her cheeks had grown hot, the way she was blinking a little too quickly. Beast Boy sure as hell noticed, and for the second time that day he felt totally shell shocked. Up till now he'd been willing to accept Raven's reaction on the beach as a fluke. But no, there it was, sure as sunshine. Raven was flushed.

This was new. This was very new.

Subconsciously, his lips inched upward in a self-satisfied, Cheshire Cat sort of grin, and Raven held his gaze with ever intensifying coldness. But he didn't mind. He saw right through it, as usual.

"I like when you call me that," he told her, and looked away before he broke his smooth composure. "Do your meditation thing. I'm not leaving."

Without looking back at her he lifted a book from her nightstand and buried his nose in the page. When he heard her picking up the chant where she left off, he could hear relief in her voice.

Staring at the pages, he didn't comprehend a single word of the Latin text he was reading. He wasn't quite sure why but he was flying on cloud nine, with a fluttery sense of elation in his rib cage. There was something dangerously thrilling about what he'd just done. Maybe it was that he'd never seen her flustered before, and it was really amusing, and, dare he admit it _(kind of adorable)_. Maybe he craved it the same way he craved her smiles. Maybe, same as with her smiles, the reason it felt so satisfying was because _he _was the one who'd enticed it from her. The feeling was a giant marquee sign flashing in his mind, a bell ringing out to alert the masses: _Ding ding ding, we have a winner!_ Maybe it was all just a big game to him.

But hey, life was just a big game, wasn't it?

_And, _he thought, watching Raven with growing curiosity as she slipped further and further into her self-induced trance,_ I fucking love games._


	3. Chasing Rabbits

For those of you that've read some of this story already, the previous chapters have been given a little overhaul, and this chapter itself had been extended.

—-—- [2] Chasing Rabbits

"We've got ourselves a problem," Cyborg stated, the moment the other four answered his call to join him at the main computer.

Beast Boy leaned against the doorframe, the last to arrive. "Did a fan fall in love with me _again?_" He made a show of sighing and threw his hands up. "I'll get the pepper spr—mfgh—" A band of black magic silenced him.

"Thank you, Raven," Cyborg said curtly, without needing to turn around to see what had shut him up. "As I was saying, we have an issue. Y'all can say goodbye to the abundant leisure time we've been privy to over this last year."

Robin leaned over Cyborg to scan the windows pulled up on the multiple monitors. "What is all this?"

"I've been running tests on the malfunctioning training equipment."

Robin nodded solemnly. It had been an object of extreme tension between the two of them for the last few weeks, ever since that bomb went off and nearly killed them. In the time since, there had been a half dozen more incidents with malfunctioning tech, each resulting in increasingly close calls. Robin hesitated to scold Cyborg on it, since it had never been an issue in the past, but when it was putting his team in danger...

"Seems we've got ourselves a sneaky little worm," Cyborg went on. "Look here, in the program files for the security system we've got a couple strays, 'cept that they don't lead nowhere, they just trap you in a perpetual loop. And look at this bullshit right here—you can't delete them. I've gone into the coding, they're hardwired in! Can't weed 'em out without uprooting the whole damn garden..."

"Um, Cyborg, old pal..."

Cyborg dragged his hand down his face. _"What, _BB?"

"English please, for the plebeians."

"We got a hacker, yo. That simple enough? He basically opened a back door into our system and propped it open—with our own support beams."

Starfire finally butted in, pushing forward to survey the meaningless numbers and words scattered across the screen. She frowned, wondering if she could learn this language by kissing Cyborg, since he was part computer. It probably didn't work that way. "Can we not do something?"

Cyborg shrugged and leaned back in the swivel chair, causing it to groan dangerously. "This is some next level shit. So, honestly, I don't know. We might have to take our whole system offline and start from scratch."

As always, Robin was the first to turn them all toward the bigger picture. "Why would someone do this? What could they be after?"

"Besides the obvious multiple attempts at killing us," Raven deadpanned from the corner, where she was pretending not to notice Beast Boy as he inched closer and closer to her. Ever since the failure of the bomb, he'd been annoying her even more than usual, which was a feat in itself. The bigger feat was how she'd managed so far not to drown him in the bay.

"They could go about that in a more straightforward way," Robin countered.

Starfire nodded. "It does not seem very... villainous. At least not in the manner I am familiar with."

"Not every villain is about pomp and showmanship," Raven argued. As Beast Boy, having finally reached her, lifted one arm to throw across her shoulders with the subtlety of a freight train, she dropped through the floor and reemerged on the other side of the room between Cyborg and Starfire, leaving Beast Boy to tumble gracelessly to the floor. "Just as not every superhero is about charm and class."

"Come on!" Beast Boy complained as he did an off-kilter flip to his feet, unconcerned with his dignity. "I'm charming as hell!"

"Moving on," Robin ground out. He shot Beast Boy a sideways glance that hopefully looked like a warning, but the recipient just grinned like a dog being scolded. He had no idea he was doing anything wrong and that was annoying. This weird aggressively flirty thing Beast Boy had recently started up with Raven was fine during down time; it was obviously just another breed of Beast Boy's endless attempts to elicit emotional reactions from her (for whatever reasons, Robin could live without knowing). But now that it seemed a serious villain was entering stage left, Robin worried he might have to put an end to this thing, whatever it was, before it became a major distraction.

"Anyhow, that's not the main reason I called y'all in here. Most of these stray files seem sourceless, but I _have _managed to track one of them back to an outside source. And, lucky us, the IP address comes from somewhere in town."

"Shocker," Beast Boy drawled.

"Great," decided Robin. "We'll check it out pronto. Beast Boy and I will head to the location of the IP address, and meanwhile Cy can keep trying to crack this virus."

Beast Boy was shocked to be paired with Robin in this venture—it was something that didn't happen often—but his shock was outweighed by Starfire's hurt feelings.

"You do not want me to do the work of reconnaissance with you, Robin?"

The look of intense sadness on her face melted him a little, and he rubbed the side of his neck with a nervous chuckle. Starfire always seemed to forget there were other people in the room. It made him feel like he was in a spotlight. _Not_ the place he wanted to be when intimate emotions were the subject matter. "I need you and Raven to shut down all the training equipment," he explained. "I mean everything. I want you to individually disconnect everything from the circuits. We don't want any more accidents. There'll be no more training with any of the equipment that connects to the Tower's main system, at least until we figure this hacker thing out."

When Starfire didn't look fully satisfied, he added, a little guiltily, "And I don't trust Beast Boy to do all that without blowing anything up."

"Hey! Not cool, Robin! I know how to work Cyborg's thingamajigs almost better than you do!"

Irritating as it was, that much was true. Beast Boy had channeled a lot of his boredom over the last year into observing Cyborg working on his gadgets like it was a fascinating television program. "I meant blowing anything up with Raven's powers by proxy."

Beast Boy scratched his cheek while he thought that one over, then finally pointed at Robin with two finger guns. "Fair enough."

The city hovered in that zone between afternoon and evening, when the work day hadn't quite yet ended, and the thrill of nightlife was still poised on the threshold. Robin wove through the traffic, glad to be just ahead of rush hour, glancing up every so often at the distant green hawk as he passed over the sinking sun. When he got to Delancey Boulevard, he took a sharp turn into the parking garage and pulled out his city pass. Beast Boy was perched on the hanging streetlight when he emerged, but quickly joined him on the sidewalk.

"I dunno how you put up with the hassle of parking," Beast Boy complained. He'd long since decided against the idea of owning a moped when he realized he'd have to deal with parking it somewhere and—god forbid—paying every time.

"4170," Robin observed, gesturing to the three-story Sears next to the parking garage. "That way."

Beast Boy followed along as Robin made his way south. "What's our address again?"

"4289."

"So it'll be across the street, then. What do you think we have on our hands here with this hacker? A bored lunatic? Someone with a grudge? Think it could be a villain we already know, like Control Freak or something?"

Robin frowned. "This is out of his league. To be honest, I'm not sure what we're up against. That's why we're here."

"And you brought me as backup because I'm like, your go-to guy?" Beast Boy said with skepticism. He was still trying to figure out exactly why it was him Robin brought along. They were great working together with the team, but they'd never exactly clicked as a dynamic duo. Their approaches to fighting, to surveillance, to gathering of evidence, were too different. They were too polar.

"Actually, Beast Boy, I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

Beast Boy's ears perked and he stopped, causing an elderly pedestrian to nearly run into him. He tuned out the old man's angry cursing, watching Robin struggle with his words for a moment.

"It's about Raven."

Uh oh.

"This... habit you've picked up lately, of flirting with her."

Beast Boy resumed scanning the building numbers on the opposite side of the road so he wouldn't have to look at his leader. "You noticed?"

"Uh... everyone notices."

Beast Boy shrugged it off. 4217. 4223. 4231. "It's no big deal, Rob, I'm just messing with her."

"Yeah, I know. I don't know why you've always felt the need to mess with her, but I think this takes it a little too far. Don't you think you're crossing a line?"

Beast Boy snorted. "Are you seriously going all big brother on me right now? I could do the same to you, bro." He got up in Robin's face and pulled his best impression of Robin's serious voice that he could muster. "Don't you think it's inappropriate to stay in your teammate's room past midnight? Don't you think it's crossing a line to come out the next day still wearing the same clo—"

He was interrupted by Robin squeezing his lips shut with between his thumb and finger. "Not the same situation," he said, his face on fire. Then he pushed on down the street, leaving Beast to run to catch up.

"I'm just saying," Beast Boy hastily ammended, "that it's just one of those things." He made a vague shrugging motion and lazily scanned the building numbers. "One of those things Raven and I do, like when I tell her jokes and she pretends not to think they're funny."

"_I'm_ just saying," Robin retorted, "that I guess if it amuses you and it's not hurting her then have at it. But if you take it too far I will deal with the situation as I see fit."

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... _shit."_

Robin ran into his back, not realizing he'd stopped walking abruptly. "Calm down Beast Boy, I'm not gonna murder you. Just respect her, that's all I'm asking."

"No no no no no—not that."

Robin peered around his shoulder and realized that Beast Boy had gone slack jawed, and was pointing weakly across the street. Robin followed his gaze, past the yellow cabs parked at the stoplight, past the suit-wearing officials on the other side of street as they descended the white marble steps, up to the marble arch and the towering columns and the giant eagle statues that sat on the top of the municipal building, marking it for what it was. Above the vast double-doors was an engraved gold sign proclaiming the building _4289._

"Oh shit," Robin repeated, mirroring Beast Boy's expression.

The wind fell out of their sails and they comically looked to each other for direction. They'd been about to storm the building Cyborg had tracked one of the files to, but now they had no idea what to do. They said the obvious in tandem, as if saying it out loud could alleviate the incredulity of it.

"The virus came from City Hall?"

.

.

"This definitely beats partnering with Robin." The only sound in the dim hall was the light padding of Beast Boy's feet as he trotted alongside Raven, who moved through the air as a testament to silence.

She broke that to respond in ire. "We've only been paired together because your powers and mine allow for the greatest subtlety. Subtlety and stealth, which is lost when you spend the whole mission chattering at me."

"Can't help it. I talk when I'm nervous."

"You shouldn't be nervous. We're doing some light investigation, that's all."

"Investigation of a possible _government official_ that may or may not be targeting our lives... Yeah, that's no cause for concern," he droned caustically.

Raven raised a hand to silence him, and then gestured frantically in the air, sliding two fingers across her other hand like she was scraping something off with a peace sign. Beast Boy saw her signal and reacted: he shrank into a flea so fast it was as if he had vanished, and Raven took her cue to open a portal on the locked door at her back, slipping into it just in time to avoid the security guard that came waltzing around the corner on his routine walk. The small bubble of the guard's tired aura ambled past her hiding spot, and she heard him yawn as she pressed her ear to the door. Good thing they'd chosen to come at 4am, nearing the end of the overnight shift. She'd been skeptical of its advantages but Cyborg and Robin had insisted.

So much of her focus was devoted to the guard's retreating emotions that she never noticed Beast Boy reforming behind her. Green obscured her vision. He'd leaned in to press his own ear against the oak, leaving his face a startling inch from hers.

"What're we listening for?" he whispered.

Raven stumbled back, angry at herself for being startled, and even angrier when he grabbed her wrist to keep her from tripping over an empty mop bucket. She tore her arm away and steadied herself on something—wet. Gross. She surrounded the mop-water on her hand with energy and sent it flying off, some of it landing on a very amused Beast Boy. So they were in a janitor closet. Of course. It'd have been too much to ask that they randomly stumble into the correct room.

"Stop doing that," Raven seethed.

"Doing what?" he laughed. "Employing my boyish charm? _Sweeping_ you off your feet?" Too late she noticed he was leaning on a broom handle, and she grew enraged that he wasn't taking this seriously.

"Please, don't flatter yourself."

Beast Boy feigned grave injury, clutching at his heart and dragging himself after her as she opened the door with caution. "You wound me."

"If only. Let's just get to the fourth floor so we can get this over with."

After Beast Boy and Robin's shocking discovery, the Titans had decided the best way to handle this would be with complete secrecy. After all, they had no idea what they were up against. Cyborg had sent a virus of his own to the IP address in question: a virus which rooted through the computer's hard drive until it turned over the right leaf, the one that let them know exactly which office held the offending technology. Robin had been very transparent when he informed the two who would carry out this mission.

_What you're doing,_ he'd said with undisguised discomfort, _is illegal. But there's no getting around it, at least for now. This is the best plan of action. _

Raven grabbed Beast Boy under the arm and lifted them both through the ceiling of the long hallway. Up through the second floor, and through the third. Raven checked the clock on her communicator. They had nine minutes left before the security system rebooted from Cyborg's fry, and the cameras switched back on.

_You're gathering intel and that's it. Try not to complicate this any further._

_But complications are what I live for!_ Beast Boy had joked._ Besides, girls dig 'complicated.' _With that he had quirked an eyebrow at Raven, and she realized he'd been snaking his arm around her waist when his hand came to rest at her hip.

There was a bruise forming under his left eye where she'd slapped him, opting for her actual physical hand over the use of her powers to optimize the satisfaction of it. There was something in that skin-connecting-loudly-with-skin noise that ebbed the hurricane of her fury, just a bit. She could see the bruise now, even in this after-hours darkness with only the florescent emergency lights offering them guidance. By just a fraction of a degree she felt the sting of guilt. It was only another of his games. Harmless, just like he was. She knew he wasn't being malicious. He was just being... Beast Boy.

"I shouldn't have slapped you," Raven mumbled. The fourth floor was lighter than the rest, lit by the skyline outside the elongated windows set into the walls of the great open room.

Beast Bog oozed nonchalance. "Ehhh I was asking for it. Which cubicle was it again?"

"It's not one of the cubicles, it's that office at the end."

"Gotcha."

A minx the color of mint leaf went slinking through the dark cubicles and Raven followed. When they got to the correct door Raven pushed it open, letting Beast Boy slip inside. Not that she'd flatter him with such a sentiment, but it was a good thing he was here because she didn't know the first thing about computers. Who knew what kind of protections they'd have to work through to find—

"Hey, put your hands where we can see them!"

Raven turned to Beast Boy sharply, who had issued the command. He pointed to the computer chair, where, to her shock, the back of someone's head was just within view. What were they doing here at night? In the dark? Staring at a dark computer screen...

"Beast Boy," she said with sudden urgency, gripping his arm as he advanced toward the chair.

"Didn't you hear me? This is a Titan speaking and we know what you've been doing. We've got proof that you hacked our system and tried to compromise our equipment. Hello, can you hear me dude? Do you get it? This is a fucking arrest!"

"Beast Boy!"

He turned back to her with exasperation. She had an iron grip on his arm, not allowing him to advance any further toward the chair. _"What?"_

Raven shook her head at him violently. She turned up her emotional dials to full blast. She felt everything. The four guards in various rooms downstairs. All their fears and doubts and bubbles of love and comfort. Beast Boy's rage, his sense of duty, his impatience. That was it. That was all. This was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Something was missing. She shook her head violently and with a flick of dark power she turned on the light switch.

She made the mistake of forgetting to turn down her dials again before she did, so she felt all of Beast Boy's shock and revulsion and guilt as if it was her own. "Oh no," was all he said.

"Don't touch anything," she whispered.

Red splattered the walls like kindergarten finger paint. With morbid determination they split and went toward the desk, looking toward the source of all the red. The man in the desk chair had a bullet hole through the center of his forehead, and his eyes were cloudy white and full of burst blood vessels, unseeing and empty. Red duct tape had been stretched across his mouth.

"What is this?" Beast boy gasped, his voice ragged with emotion. "I thought he was the one who... What does this mean?"

"Look here, there's something written on the duct tape, Beast Boy."

In a wildly loopy font, there was a single message written across the dead man's face.

_and if you go chasing rabbits..._

Beast Boy stared at the writing for a moment, paused with his hand halfway through his hair. He quirked his head in that canine way. He spoke quietly. "And you know you're going to fall..."

"What?"

Beast Boy shook his head. "Nothing, it's... just a song. What do we do, Raven?"

"We get out of here."

"But we... He.."

"Look, don't you realize how incriminating this looks? It'd be one thing if we found a dead body, but we snuck in here past security guards and we took out the security system ourselves, what do you think they're going to_ think?_" He winced at her tone and she suddenly remembered his violent spike of guilt and self-doubt she'd felt before shutting off her senses. "Garfield," she said, as softly as she could possibly manage. "We need to get the _hell out of here, right now."_

He gaped at her as if in a trance, and she took that as an 'okay' and she opened a portal next to them and dragged him back to the tower.

Raven sat through as much of Cyborg and Robin's debating as they could. Personally, she was firmly in Robin's boat. There was obviously some bigger scheme going on here, something with edges they couldn't quite yet see. It was possible that the man they'd found murdered had never been the one to send the virus at all. What did it all mean?

When she couldn't take any more of the testosterone she excused herself and went to find Beast Boy, who had vanished right after giving Robin his mission report.

He was exactly where she expected him to be. Sitting on the edge of the roof, staring out. But not at the city lights. For some reason he was facing the sea. Its black expanse was nearly indiscernible this time of night, betrayed only by the twinkling of far off stars on its surface that were actually boats. Raven sat next to him, hoping she wouldn't have to actually say the words _are you okay. _A high wind blew against them, trying to push them back into the roof, plastering their legs to ledge_. _She'd never been good at initiating these kinds of talks. Luckily, she didn't have to.

"I know it's all to do with our line of work and whatever, but it doesn't make it any less shocking. I just.. I dunno. It's not the first time either of us have seen a body. I just can't get used to it."

"I don't think you would be _you_ if you could get used to something like that."

"I guess not. And you wouldn't like it if I wasn't me, right Rae?" Her eyes slid to the left and she saw his solemn state had become tainted with a playful twinkle.

She chose to ignore his stupid flirting. "What was that song?" she said instead. "The one written on the tape." They'd left it out of their mission report because it hadn't seemed important, but for some reason she couldn't stop thinking about it. Something about the phrase caught her.

"Oh. I dunno if it's really from that song. The words are the same, though. _And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall, tell them a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call to call Alice."_

"Alice?"

"Like, Alice in Wonderland, Alice. The song's about Alice in Wonderland. Kinda." At Raven's prolonged silence Beast Boy grew agitated, and scooted over to close the distance between them. "Tell me you seen that. Or read it," he added, then finally moving on with desperation to, "_heard_ of it?"

Raven shook her head.

Beast Boy grinned down at her, and in this close proximity she realized for the first time ever that he had outgrown her by several inches. "You are too precious for this world," he laughed, and reached up to brush a strand of hair that was blowing in her face.

"Will you stop that?" She shoved his hand away. What was it with him lately? She could handle his jokes and his teasing with stride, but this flirting thing, she didn't know what to do with it. Maybe that was why it amused him so much.

Feigning innocence, he refused to move away. "Stop what?"

"Did you seriously come all the way out here just to flirt at me like a moron?"

Beast Boy just kicked his legs playfully. "No, if you recall I came out here to do some soul-searching._ You _showed up unannounced. What are _you _here for?"

He leaned in as he said it, and she was so annoyed by now that she didn't shrink back. For the first time, she called his bluff. _Two can play this game, Beast Boy._

Raven blinked up at him the way she'd seen Star sometimes do at Robin in the years before they started dating, in that wistful pained way, and when she spoke she spoke in a voice somehow airy and sultry all at once. "I thought it was obvious, Gar."

Beast Boy's jaw dropped at the casual use of his name, and his eyes dragged down her face in an almost physical way, until they fell on her lips like he was seeing them for the very first time. He stammered over a nonsensical sentence. Raven almost laughed out loud.

She didn't, but she allowed a small triumphant smile to grace her lips, and Beast Boy's longing look became accusatory. "Hey, what the hell?" This was the same look of betrayal he'd gotten when she slapped him. She patted his head condescendingly, feeling that rush of satisfaction she always got when she outwitted him.

"You can't do that," he whined. He looked for all the world like she'd unplugged the X-box right when he was about to beat a level.

"Watch me." And she had the distinct feeling, as she strode toward the door with her head held high, that he was, in fact, watching her.


End file.
